


but loving you is red

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cetari AU, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-06-01 00:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15131525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: Makali sings about love, if you aren’t looking closely, and about caste, if you look a little bit closer, but mostly he sings about loneliness.





	but loving you is red

_ (“Red like the sky, sunburned and lonely…”)  _

 

 

Makali sings about love, if you aren’t looking closely, and about caste, if you look a little bit closer, but mostly he sings about loneliness.

Makali puts his whole self in his voice. Ahito doesn’t go to every concert — there are meetings, press conferences, debates — but he goes to most of them, and he takes Makali home at the end of the night. (They tried having Makali stay alone at a hotel near the concert venue. Neither of them wound up sleeping, and Makali’s voice was shot through the next day; he’d been sobbing all night.) They take the train home from the concert and Makali is quiet, lost, like he left a piece of himself on the stage behind the microphone and in front of the crowd. 

They sit in the back of the train car, and Makali curls up against Ahito’s side and Ahito lays an arm over Makali’s shoulder. It's almost empty this time of night. Makali’s trembling. With the makeup wiped off and Makali’s concert clothes covered up with a jacket that's too big for him, nobody looks twice at them. 

Ahito puts a hand on his elbow, leads him the last few blocks home. Makali stays quiet. The lost look on his face doesn't go away. Concerts are like that, some nights. 

When the door to their apartment closes they collapse on the couch, Ahito in the corner and Makali halfway in his lap and halfway leaning against his side. Ahito smooths down his hair, rocks him gently, murmurs things to Makali until Makali goes soft and boneless in his arms and cries. 

Makali falls asleep curled up against Ahito like this eventually, on nights when he’s lost and distant. (Ahito tried laying him down in his own bed, once, and the next morning Makali had dried blood up and down his upper arms from where he’d been scratching at his skin. Neither of them had slept. Ahito hasn’t tried that again.) Tonight he closes his eyes and lets Ahito hold him and doesn't bother to wipe the tear tracks off of his face. He always clings after concerts, but tonight he seems more desperate, twisting his fingers into Ahito’s shirt and burying his face in Ahito’s shoulder. Ahito glances at the clock and sits with him, lets him cling and nuzzle and bury his face in Ahito’s shoulder. 

Makali shifts closer into him, moves into Ahito’s lap. Opens his eyes. They're strangely bright in the dark room, reflecting the glowing clock and the lights of the city outside and some feverish thing that sits in Makali’s temples when he writes, when he sings. Ahito holds his gaze steady, doesn't blink. They pause there, too close to one another, for what feels like minutes but is likely less than seconds before Makali leans forward and kisses him. 

He stops breathing for a few seconds, too surprised to do anything than hold still. Makali pulls away, and then his face twists and he whispers something that might have been  _ I'm so sorry.  _

“Don't be,” Ahito whispers, and then (he'll tell himself later that it was purely on impulse, that he was sleep-deprived and contact high on who-knows-what and not in his right mind) kisses Makali back. 

It isn't one slow, drawn-out contact like movies would have you believe — their mouths touch briefly, light and quick and over and over again, both of them getting firmer and bolder and hungrier for touch as they keep kissing one another. Ahito’s hands settle on Makali’s waist and hip; Makali winds his arms around Ahito’s neck, wraps Ahito’s hair around his fingers just hard enough to make Ahito moan and pull him closer still. 

(Maybe they have too much sense to go further or maybe they're just too tired, but neither of them fumbles with the other’s clothing, neither of them reaches down past the other’s hips, neither of them pulls the other down so they're lying on above the other on the couch. Neither of them cross the point of no return, tonight.) 

When they've stopped, Makali pulls back to look Ahito in the eye, and stands up, and goes to his room alone. Ahito does not follow. 

Both of them sleep. Neither of them sleep easy. 

 

 

They don't speak of it in the morning, or the next day, or the next. Sometimes Ahito wonders if he didn't dream it — but no, Makali looks at him differently now.

Makali writes two new songs and neither of them are about being lonely, they're about love on a surface level and about caste if you look a level deeper and about wanting something you shouldn't have if you look a level deeper than that. He writes a song and calls it  _ Brother Mine  _ and shares a preview; the internet is conflicted about whether it's a metaphor or about one of his actual brothers, and if so, which one. Ahito disables his keyboard when he reads those arguments. 

Ahito goes to work, goes to meetings, goes to press conferences. Talks about Ekano’s policy plans (they're his policy plans, but he's red, he is the voice and Ekano is the hands and that's how it has to look to everyone else) and gives the very best versions of his four different campaign smiles and doesn't let on about anything that's happened at home. 

Makali and Ahito talk, of course, but not about the night after the concert, not about what they both remember and neither of them acknowledge, until two months after it happens when Ahito gets home from a press conference late at night and Makali is waiting awake for him. 

“I love you,” Makali says before he says anything else, and Ahito collapses on the couch and leans on his side. “We should talk about two months ago.” 

No clarification is needed. “It's one in the morning,” Ahito says, but they both know he isn't actually objecting, he's _terrified._

“We won't talk about it when it's light out,” Makali says, which is too reasonable to argue with. And then, softer: “I don't regret it.” 

Ahito moves closer to him, drapes himself over Makali. “Neither do I,” he says, “I tried to but I don't.” 

They're reds, and successful ones. Both of them are public figures. Both of them are subject to scrutiny, and both of them are well aware of how hard it is to hide. 

“I'd like to kiss you again,” Makali says, his voice still soft. “May I?” 

Ahito doesn't answer.

 

 

(At least, he doesn't answer in words.)


End file.
